Facebook Buys India Startup Amid Push to Add Mobile Users

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. acquired a technology
startup in India as the largest social-networking service seeks
to bolster its presence among mobile-device users.

Facebook bought Little Eye Labs, which develops tools that
Android application developers can use to analyze and enhance
efficiency of mobile apps, the Bangalore, India-based company
said on its website. Financial terms weren’t disclosed for
Facebook’s first purchase in India and Carson Dalton, the India
spokesman of Menlo Park, California-based company, declined to
comment on the terms of the deal.

Billionaire Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is
stepping up efforts to help Facebook, the top seller of online
advertisements after Google Inc., generate more of the company’s
ad revenue from mobile. Ad spend by U.S. companies on mobile
devices will account for 23 percent of digital-ad expense in
2013, up from 12 percent in the previous year, according to New
York-based researcher EMarketer Inc.

“If this company helps you analyze the mobile apps and
usage patterns of users, it would enable doing data analytics.
That is extremely important information for advertisers,” said
Urmil Shah, a Mumbai-based analyst at Kim Eng Securities Pvt.
“That is ultimately where Facebook would make money.”

Little Eye Labs, whose entire team will move to Facebook’s
headquarters in Menlo Park, was set up about a year ago,
according to the statement. Founded by Kumar Rangarajan, it
received financing from angel investors GSF India and VenturEast
Tenet Fund, according to Little Eye’s website.

The company is “focused on producing useful and engaging
mobile apps,” Subbu Subramanian, Facebook’s Bangalore-based
engineering manager, said in an e-mailed statement. “The Little
Eye Labs technology will help us to continue improving our
Android codebase to make more efficient, higher-performing
apps.”